You can be assured that the film entitled “Runner” discussed here is not the recently released Prime Video thriller “The Runner,” which starred Gal Gadot and has almost certainly disappeared into the vast Amazon algorithm by the time you read these words. This one, on the other hand, has no time for pesky definite articles, or much of anything else, as it hurtles co-stars Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson from one crazy escapade to another. This is about as generic an action-comedy hybrid as you can possibly get; while it won’t exactly make anyone forget the classics of that particular cinematic sub-genre, it has a certain weirdo charm that makes it far more watchable than it has any right to be.
Set in Brisbane, Australia, Ritchson stars as Hank, whose critical backstory is doled out in the first couple of minutes. He was a former Navy SEAL; he has been sober for a year, has an uneasy relationship with his ex-wife (Geraldine Hakewill), has sad memories of the young daughter that they lost a few years earlier, and he is now working as a “runner,” transporting a wide variety of items from point A to point B at the behest of his boss. One day, after going through a number of runs, one of which finds him eventually taking care of a rare parakeet when neither of its former owners wants it, he is given one last big job: Picking up a “medical package” at the airport and bringing it to the hospital.
The package turns out to be a liver being transported to a hospital so that it can be given to a dying seven-year-old girl with a rare blood type. It gets a little more complicated when Ben (Wilson), the devil-may-care medical courier who has been accompanying the organ in its cooler, informs Hank that he will continue to stay with the organ until it arrives at its final destination and that, despite the liver’s high-tech cooler, they only have about three hours or so to get to the hospital before it is no longer viable. It gets really complicated soon after they set off when they find themselves being pursued by members of a violent drug cartel led by Damien (Rodrigo Santoro), who wants the liver for himself—perhaps for the possible $1 million value on the black market, or perhaps for other reasons.
That is pretty much it in terms of plot development, as most of the film is one large-scale action beat after another, encompassing shootings, stabbings, axings, car crashes, explosions, and punches to the face. The rare respites from the relentless brutality mostly involve either scenes in which the more gregarious Ben tries to get Hank to open up or ones in which the sick kid’s mother (Leila George) frets at the hospital while waiting for the liver to arrive.
In other words, “Runner” is more or less an Americanized version of Jason Statham’s “Transporter” franchise, albeit with a ham-fisted redemption arc shoehorned in by co-writers Miles Hubley and Tommy White. As is usually the case in films like this, the plot exists as little more than an excuse for all the big action beats, and that is where the movie gets especially curious. On the one hand, it is, despite the PG-13 rating, pretty violent from start to finish—certainly more violent than one might expect from something being released by Angel Studios, a distributor more associated with faith-related productions.
At the same time, even while the punches are being thrown, you get the sense that they are being pulled as well because many of those scenes are presented in a choppy manner that suggests that director Scott Waugh, the auteur behind “Need for Speed,” “Hidden Strike,” and “Expend4bles,” originally had a much gorier vision for the story that got lost in the effort to get a more commercially viable PG-13 rating.
Yet, while it is undeniably silly and chintzy, “Runner” turns out to be more involving than one could have plausibly expected. The chief asset on display is Ritchson, who has shown himself to be one of the most interesting of the new crop of action stars, capable of maintaining audience interest even in the scenes where he isn’t required to deliver beatdowns. This time, the film centers primarily on the offbeat relationship that develops between him and Wilson. While what they come up with is not of the caliber of “Midnight Run” or even “Freebie and the Bean,” the two demonstrate an undeniably winning chemistry that works far better than it has any real right to. It adds some big laughs and even a couple of moments of poignancy into the otherwise testosterone-heavy mix.
“Runner” is meat-and-potatoes filmmaking at its most basic, the kind where all of the ingredients involved are, at best, utility-grade. But they have been put together with enough skill to make for an easy-to-swallow end result. It is no masterwork, and Ritchson should probably exert more quality control in his script selection. However, if all you want is 90-odd minutes of mayhem delivered in a relatively painless format, the film, much like its central character, delivers most of the goods.
